Pitts: Here's a question for Fox pundits

If he can’t answer it, maybe Brit Hume can. Both men were recently part of a panel on “Fox News Sunday” to which moderator Chris Wallace posed this question: Has race played a role in the often-harsh treatment of President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder? Wallace was reacting to a clip of Holder strongly hinting that a testy encounter with House Republicans was part of a pattern of race-based abuse of himself and the president.

Some of the panelists framed their answers in political dimensions, i.e., what does this mean for the midterms? But Hume and Will responded directly.

Has race played a part? Heck no.

Said Hume: “This strikes me as kind of crybaby stuff from Holder. My sense about this is that both Eric Holder and Barack Obama have benefited politically enormously from the fact that they are African-American and the first to hold the jobs that they hold.”

“Look,” added Will, “liberalism has a kind of Tourette’s syndrome these days. It’s just constantly saying the word ‘racism’ and ‘racist.’ It’s an old saying in the law: If you have the law on your side, argue the law, if you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table. This is pounding the table.”

And here, let us remove Holder from the equation because, frankly, the question I’m here to ask is more pertinent to his boss than him. I just wish Mssrs. Will and Hume would explain one thing:

You say race has played no role in the treatment of President Obama? Fine. What would it look like if it did?

I mean, we’re talking about a president who was called “uppity” by one GOP lawmaker, “boy” by another and “subhuman” by a GOP activist, who was depicted as a bone-through-the-nose witch doctor by opponents of his health-care reform bill, as a pair of cartoon spook eyes against a black backdrop by an aide to a GOP lawmaker and as an ape by various opponents, who has been dogged by a “tea party” movement whose earliest and most enthusiastic supporters included the Council of Conservative Citizens, infamous for declaring the children of interracial unions “a slimy brown glop;” who was called a liar by an obscure GOP lawmaker during a speech before a joint session of Congress who has had to contend with a years-long campaign of people pretending there is some mystery about where he was born.

There’s much more, but you get the drift. So I wish those men would explain how, exactly, the treatment of the president would differ if race were indeed part of the mix. What misbehavior would make them say: “OK, this is definitely about color of skin, not content of character?” Because from where I sit, much of the behavior toward Obama would need white hoods to be more blatantly racial than it already is.

Hume, by the way, says some critics have called his comments themselves “racist.” They’ve also scored the fact that this discussion was undertaken by an all-white panel. While the optics were odd, there was nothing in what he or Will said that would seem to merit that label. Those who slap him with it are likely motivated by the same knee-jerk reflex by which my critics — depend on it — will claim that I consider any disagreement with the president to be — sigh — “racist.”

That’s silly. But then, discussion of this seminal American fault line often reveals in some of us an unfortunate fondness for clownish superficiality. And yet that silliness does not detract from the criticality of the fault line itself. Nor can I share Will’s conviction that manly taciturnity is the best way to seal that fissure.

So what I ask is not rhetorical, not abstract, not a joke. It is a serious question.

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1a: the act of discriminating
b: the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently
2: the quality or power of finely distinguishing
3a: the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually
b: prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment

So, according to Leonard Pitts Junior, because their are "X number" of thousands of people who actually are bigots and hate President Barack Obama because of his race (is that the white part or the black part), he paints the tens of millions of people who disagree with President Barack Obama because of his policies with the broad brush of racism; since that is the only possible reason he can give why any white person could possibly have to disagree with a black person .

Easier, I guess, than trying to defend President Barack Obama's policies with actual facts or results.

Put another person with the same political beliefs and agenda but different race in the picture and ask if the treatment would be the same. Would Joe Biden be treated the same way if Obama was not in the picture?

If it were racism, the Republicans would treat Obama that way even if he were on their side.

"You say race has played no role in the treatment of President Obama? Fine. What would it look like if it did?". I am not sure but I am guessing it would probably not look like a movie that depicted our President being assassinated. After all, Bush was white so it could not have racism therefore Pitts had no problem with that.

Nothing was off limits for Bush as far as the libs were concerned but suddenly any disagreement with Obama is labeled as racism. It is racism alright. It is racism because disagreement with Obama is condemned for no other reason other THAN his race.

Most conservatives disagree with Obama's policies. They are not disagreeing with his policies because he's black. If there were a white man or woman in his place making the same policy decisions, the conservatives would still disagree with those policies.

That does not mean, however, that many conservatives don't also add racial innuendo to their policy critiques, as a kind of icing on the cake. Mr. Pitts is not inventing the racial slurs made by some of the GOP. They are well documented, undeniable, and in very poor taste.

Yes there is sometimes an element of racism to the comments made about President Obama. I've also noticed it in comments directed towards Michelle Obama. They are clearly not about policy.

No, I am not saying that all of President Obama's critics are racist or that being critical of his policies implies racism.

Yes, there were disrespectful crude comments made about President Bush that were definitely "off limits" and should have been denounced by anyone believing in civility and respect. I regret having ignored some of those comments.

Has race played a role in the way Obama and holder have been treated ?
You can bet it has ,had Obama been white he would have been impeached by now
and they would be looking for a prison cell somewhere hot for holder .

I say those who falsely charge others with racism, should be charged with a hate crime.

Wasn't Obama brought up in this world, in a white man's world, by white people? I think he has used his ethnicity for political gain. It certainly appears that way when he speaks publicly about how the Civil Rights Movement made him who he is. He has publicly made the claim that "I am the fruits of your labor." He has made everything about race at every opportunity. And the American People continue to fall for the scam hook line and sinker. He has taken a golden opportunity and turned it into an 8 year crapfest. Let it go.

Because if a white guy ran for president on the same ideals as Obama, there's no way he would get elected once, much less twice!! And if a white Democrat President lied as much as Obama has, heck, at this point, even the media would be crucifying him. So yeah, race matters - it also matter to all the people who blindly voted for him BECAUSE he's black, well partially black.

Were excited about the election of president Obama. In fact there seemed to me to be some national pride that we had elected a young, polished, very smart black man to the highest office. There seemed to be a lot if hope that he would unite this country in ways that had been impossible previously.

The divisiveness that has resulted, I think perhaps partly the result of false claims of racist when it was disagreement with policy have created a disappointment on a lot of fronts.

Every president has their share of detractors. It was probably telling that something as insignificant as rodeo clowns wearing an Obama mask were fired, and denigrated as racist when for as long as anybody can remember they have worn masks of presidents and movie stars. When we take things from the ridiculous to the sublime everybody is angry.

Holder has used his office, in my opinion, to obstruct everything he has been involved with. His arrogant remark of "you don't want to go there" made to a senator who was objecting to holder's actions in refusing to provide requested information, was to me more of a threat than I have ever heard from an attorney general. Standing up in front of a group bemoaning how he has been treated leaves me with one thought. Why Mr. Holder do you feel you should be immune from criticism for obstructing information? And why ,having done that, would you stoop to making it about race? One word, sir, "shameful".

I believe that it is fair to say that everyone who voted for Obama as president thought is was going to be great and a huge change for our nation. Well, they were right about the change. He certainly dropped a huge boulder of disappointment on me, my family, and many, many Americans who were originally Obama fans until we saw that when he did his change to this country, it went downhill. Obamacare was a failure, he let down his fans, he didn't really help our economy's condition, he played a role in losing the USA money, and he tries to use the whole complexion thing to try to say that anyone who doesn't like him only dislike him because he's African-American.

Just as a point of correction. It was Rep. Louie Gohmert a Rep. from the Lone Star State that addressed the issue of contempt in a rather ingenious way by satire.

Rep. Gohmert is and was a judge. Hence, his legal credentials are tremendous being a judge for the 7th District and as well a Texas Supreme Court Justice. He also was a JAG and after graduating from A&M was an exchange student in none other than Ukraine.

He is the one guy that knows more about the legal velocity of contempt on the committee than Holder himself.

Holder's reaction of "don't go there" to Gohmert will be replayed just about as often as Hillary's "what difference does it make" I will be amazed if Holder goes any further in public life past AG.

Gohmert is a nincompoop of the first order.
Why is it some lament, "reverse racism," those "playing the race card" continually, yet they also say that Presodent Obama is only in office because he isAfrican-American? So which is it? Is racism nonexistent except in the mind of minority "reverse racists"? Or is it just unnecessary ultra sensitivity of said minorities merely looking for slights everywhere?
Or is it because the president is black?

EVERYTHING is racist according to the left. Every obstacle. Every bump in the road. Every vote cast in the House and Senate. Everything unpopular or distasteful to the left. Every non Goldilocks outcome for the left is racist.

Think of the vast number of questions that could be asked of the Democrats and the answer will be "because he is black." There would be few asked of the Republicans that would be answered in that manner.

Obama is a flaming race baiter. The Democrats know this. It's standard operating procedure. That's the playbook they're working with for the time being. BHO can do as he pleases in the eyes of the left. Just keep laying those golden eggs. He's serving the purpose for now.

Which group is most concerned with the color of his skin? Who sees the most political gain from it? Why is it constantly being placed front and center, the answer for everything? Will anyone ever admit that controversy and strife come to BHO and America not because he's black but because he has gone to extraordinary means to take political advantage of it?